


How Much The Current Takes You

by Elsinore_and_Inverness



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Birthday Presents, Eating Disorders, F/M, Food Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 15:48:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12135783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsinore_and_Inverness/pseuds/Elsinore_and_Inverness
Summary: Alec Hardy has some food issues.





	How Much The Current Takes You

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of Hardy's food refusal moments felt alarmingly familiar to me, and then there's the fact that David Tennant looks at every piece of prop food like it absolutely breaks his heart that he can't eat it

A bag of frosted cookies wrapped in cellophane with a note tied to it with a bit of dark blue curling ribbon. The note said ‘Happy Birthday Hardy!’ in a roundhand scrawl with open loops at the top of the letters. It had been sitting on his desk all morning. There was no question of who it was from.   
Alec Hardy glowered at the shiny blue ribbon. His neighbor’s cat had once had to go into hospital after swallowing a length of curling ribbon. He still remembered the poor animal coughing up blood on his front porch. He couldn’t really bring himself to look at the cookies either.

He pulled open the desk drawer and dropped the bag inside, careless of the fact that this would crush the baked goods against the papers and files that already filled the drawer.

When Ellie came over to speak to him about a half hour later he tried to smile appreciatively and was not entirely successful.

'Are you okay?’ Miller asked, regarding his strained grimace with concern.

A part of him replied almost against his will, a frantic, irrational part of him that he thought he had escaped from. 'Do you have to keep giving me food? I don’t want food.’ 

Ellie shrugged, used to Hardy being irritable and impolite. 'I don’t know what else to give you.’

I don’t want anything, Hardy thought. I didn’t even want to say that. He felt an old panic stirring in his mind. Like he’d gotten too close to the edge of a fast-moving stream. He took a deep breath. Ellie had already gone back to work. More important things to deal with than Alec Hardy falling apart again. No. Don’t do that. You’re not.

When he went home he took the slightly crushed bag of cookies with him. He set them on the shelf in the kitchen and glanced at them with a familiar frisson of terror and longing. It wasn’t normal. It’d taken him long enough to realize that, and he’d thought it was something he’d left behind. 

He was vaguely aware that he was shaking. He remembered the feeling all too clearly. The spiraling circuitous thoughts. Like waves breaking over him. His own mind was far more perilous than any cliffs the Jurassic coast had to offer. 

He heard the doorbell ring. He went to answer it. Ellie Miller. Alec visibly relaxed.

'I just wanted to check on you again.’ Ellie noticed the unopened but crumpled bag of cookies on the shelf. 'Did you eat anything today?’

Hardy shrugged, ignoring the dark spots that danced in front of his vision. 

'Because if you don’t want those, we can get you something that you do want.’

'You don’t have to- I’ll be-’ Ellie took hold of his hand. Her hands were warm. 'Okay.’


End file.
